This blog will focus on the comparative experiences of French colonial soldiers, the tirailleurs sénégalais, in the French military forces during World War II and those of African American soldiers serving in the US army.

Background Tirailleurs sénégalais

Monument in Frejus en Provence; credit, erected at the fiftieth anniversary of the landing of the Free French Forces in Provence in 1944.

The African troops, known as tirailleurs sénégalais (T.S.), have
officially been incorporated in the French colonial army in 1857 by order of
the General Louis Faidherbe. These troops have been used in a variety of
missions on African, Asian and European soil.

At first, the tirailleurs sénégalais were used as a military force assisting
the French in their colonial ambitions in Northern and Western Africa and in
Madagascar. These first tirailleurs were usually captifs [domestic slaves] to
whom the French offered emancipation in exchange for military service.

Used also as a police force in the French colonies, the relations
between the African populations and the tirailleurs were quite hostile. This
feeling remained strong even at the eve of WWII as is illustrated by the
reaction of Joseph Conombo and his comrades upon reception of their uniform of
T.S. that they qualify as “habits d’esclaves” [slaves’ clothes] (note 1).
Joseph, born in Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), was part of an African elite,
educated in French schools, that deeply resented being assimilated to these men
considered mercenaries.

The participation of the T.S. in the Great War and the Second World War
contributed to the betterment of their public image. First dubbed la Force
Noire [the Black Force] in 1910 by Colonel Charles Mangin in his eponymous
book, the African colonial troops were for the first time considered by the
French military as a reserve that would compensate France’s demographic
weakness and fight against the Germans. Mangin, praised the endurance, presumed
docility and warrior-like qualities of various African populations. For instance, he wrote « La valeur guerrière des Lobis nous est
prouvée par la longue résistance qu'ils nous ont jusqu'ici opposée. Plus apprivoisés,
ils nous fourniront plus tard d'excellents soldats. » [the warlike quality
of the Lobis has been proven by the long resistance that they have given us. More
tamed, they will provide us with excellent soldiers.] (note 2)

The conceptions of Mangin were tainted by the ambient racism as the
word « tamed » suggests in the above excerpt. The novelty of
Mangin’s idea can be best understood if one considers the characteristics of
European racism, in the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century,
as illustrated in this excerpt by Ernest Renan “une race de travailleurs de la
terre, c’est le nègre : soyez pour lui bon et humain, et tout sera dans
l’ordre; une race de maîtres et de soldats, c’est la race européenne. […] Que chacun fasse ce pour quoi il est fait et tout ira bien.» [A race of tillers
of the soil, the Negro; treat him with kindness and humanity, and all will be
as it should; a race of masters and soldiers, the European race.(…) Let each
one do what he is made for, and all will be well] (note 3).

Colonel Mangin also considered that France had every right to ask its
colonial subjects to pay a blood tax, l’impôt du sang, in exchange for the mission
civilisatrice of France. In La Force Noire, Mangin
states : « Le devoir de la France vis-à-vis de ses protégés
d’outre-mer est égal envers tous ; elle le doit, […] de les faire
progresser en les guidant vers un état toujours meilleur […] Mais partout
existe la nécessité de percevoir des impôts qui déchargent peu à peu la
métropole des dépenses consenties pour le développement de chaque colonie, et
partout également la nécessité de la défense coloniale et métropolitaine peut
amener à introduire aussi l’impôt du sang. » [the duty of France
in regard to its overseas protégés is equal among all ; it has to make
them evolve by guiding them towards ever improving conditions (… )But
everywhere exists the necessity to collect taxes that would relieve the
mainland from the expenses generated for the development of each colony, and
also everywhere the necessity of colonial and homeland defense could bring upon
the introduction of the blood tax] (note 4).

During the Great War, it is estimated that 161 000 African soldiers have
been mobilized, and that 134 000 actually fought in Europe.(note 5). Among those on the European front,
historian Eric Deroo cites the figures of 30,000 dead and as many wounded during
the conflict. (note 6) The valiance of the T.S. certainly contributed to their
popularity in France even though it did not come with the expected gratitude of
the French government which still considered them as colonial subjects or
“indigenes” and not citizens (with the exception of the inhabitants of the
Quatre Communes in Senegal who were French citizens). Historian Philippe Dewitte comments on the disillusion of the demobilized
troops by referring to the words of Lamine Senghor who wrote in the journal La
Voix Nègre in march 1927 « Lorsqu’on a besoin de nous, pour nous faire
tuer ou pour nous faire travailler, nous sommes des Français; mais quand il
s’agit de nous donner les droits, nous ne sommes plus des Français, nous sommes
des Nègres! » [when they need us to get ourselves killed or to toil, we
are French ; but when it is about giving us rights, we are no longer
French, we are Negroes !]

After World War I, the French government decided to make use of the
colonial troops in its mandates in Syria and Lebanon and also for the
occupation of the Rhineland in accordance with the Treaty of Versailles. This
new role as army of occupation bestowed upon the African troops only strengthen
the racist German propaganda that, during WWI, depicted “ the Black African
soldiers as cruel and barbaric, as illegitimate warriors […]” (note 7). Historian Raffael Scheck points out
that the use of colonial among which only a minority were black Africans
resulted into the a media campaign, in Europe, that labeled the French
occupation as the “ Black Horror on the Rhine” or Schwarze Schmach in German. (note
8) Black Africans were represented as “sex-crazed
perverts performing outrages against German women, men and children,” and the
author also reports “a widespread fear of epidemics and racial degeneration” in
Germany. (note 9) This racist propaganda would later be recycled by the Nazis
at the eve of their offensive against France in 1940 affecting the
representation of African soldiers in the minds of German soldiers. (note 10)

At the beginning of World War II,
about 150 000 tirailleurs (note 11) were engaged in the defense of the French
empire among which “approximately 63,300 West Africans are estimated to have
fought in France in 1940.” (note 12). During the German offensive of May and
June 1940, the tirailleurs fought vigorously but became the victims of
massacres perpetuated by the Werhmacht. Scheck estimated that about 1000 to
1500 murders of black African POWs can be identified in the French archives. (note
13) However, he considers this number as a low estimate, given the gaps in the
French records and the fact that not all massacres have been witnessed. At the
end of June 1940, between 11 000 and 16 000 tirailleurs were declared either
dead or missing in action, while around 58,700 were prisoners of war in France.
(note 14) Finally, about one percent of tirailleurs were able to join the French
resistance, like Addi Bâ. (note 15)

The troops remaining in the French African colonies were divided between
those pledging allegiance to the collaborationist regime of Vichy and those who
supported General De Gaulle. In 1942, the forces of De Gaulle were mainly
composed of tirailleursand contributed
to the war effort of the Allies, first in North Africa, then in Italy (1943)
and finally in France (1944).

In October 1944, De Gaulle began to replace the 20,000 black African
troops by white soldiers from metropolitan France . This questionable measure
is known as le blanchiment des régiments de tirailleurs sénégalais [whitening
of the regiments of tirailleurs sénégalais].

In 1944, the situation of the west
and equatorial Africans, held in camps on the French territory and guarded by
French soldiers, was a source of tension between the troops and the French
authorities and to some extent with the French population too.Whether former POWs or recently demobilized
soldiers, the tirailleurs soon realize that in spite of their contribution to
the liberation of France, they were still discriminated against and retrograded
from the status of liberator to that of colonial subjects undesirable on French
soil. The troubles at Morlaix in November 1944, the mutiny of Versailles and
the massacre of Thiaroye in December were all illustrations of this new shift
in the relations between colonized populations and French authorities.

While the lasts of the tirailleurs sénégalais became a part of history,
France and its former colonies are still trying to reconsider the place that
these men occupied in their collective memory. From the beginning, the status
of the T.S. has been ambiguous. Used as an instrument of colonization by the
French authorities, the tirailleurs have had an ill reputation in the history
of west and equatorial Africans until a recent revalorization introduced by the
Senegalese president Abdoulaye Wade.Since
2004, November 23rd is now declareda «
journée commémorative des soldats africains ayant combattu pour l'empire
colonial français durant les deux guerres mondiales afin que les nouvelles
générations se souviennent qu'à l'heure des rendez-vous des batailles pour la
liberté, l'Afrique était présente » [day of commemoration for the African
soldiers who fought for the French colonial empire during the two World wars so
that the new generations rememberthatat the time when the battles
for Liberty were fought, Africa was present.] (note16)

The French authorities also held these men in a similar contempt as can
be gathered from the way they have been treated from 1857 to present times. In
July 2010, former president Nicolas Sarkozy, publicly announced that the French
government would allow for the alignment of African veteran’s pensions with
those of French veterans. However, the law does not require the French
authorities to actively rectify the discrimination but rather to wait for the
veterans or their descendants to claim their due, prompting General Lang’s
comments: “On a décristallisé pour se donner bonne conscience mais on n'a pas
rendu suffisamment les choses possible” [we have decrystallized to have a clear
conscience but we have not made things sufficiently possible.] (note 17)